Sara slid the key into the lock of Suckin’ Vapes, turned, and entered for another Wednesday. She was met with the smell of stale candy vape clouds hanging in the air. To think she was breathing in what so many people discarded in big blustery exhales was enough to make her gag. But it paid the bills. Barely. Even as a manager, she only barely cleared 20k a year. She locked the door back and turned on the case lights and register, then grabbed her phone to put her Spotify playlist on. In the back room, a large, obnoxious piece of paper handwritten in red Sharpie was tacked to the employee timeclock. It had been there for nearly a week, and it was almost time for Mark to be back from his vacation. He wasn’t going to like it.
“EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: CUSTOMERS ARE ALLOWED ONLY A SINGLE HIT FROM ONE TESTER! ANY MORE THAN THAT WILL BE DEDUCTED FROM YOUR PAY! I WILL BE REVIEWING THE VIDEOS DAILY!”
It was bullshit. The people who came in wanted to try a bunch of things before they bought. The regulars knew what they wanted, but sometimes sat at the bar all day. This was targeting them, but it was going to fuck everything up. Getting a new customer hooked was a process. They had over 200 flavors and management wanted to give them only ONE hit of ONE juice? It was absurd. A knock on the glass pulled Sara from her fury. She looked out to the door to see Cody and Simon standing at the door. Damn, they were early today. She opened the door and ushered them in.
“Did that shipment from Dragon’s Blood come?” Cody was practically bouncing as he ran to the back.
“I don’t know,” Sara responded. “I just got here and got mad at Josh’s idiot sign again.”
“Mark is going to be pissed,” Simon said, throwing his bag on the breakroom table. “Idk why he even partnered with Josh in the first place.”
“You know he is just doing this to give us a place to play D&D and get free vapes, right?” Cody piped in from the back. “FUCK! They didn’t send it! I’m going to fucking call Titsoff and get this fucking sorted! I’ve been waiting two fucking weeks for that juice!”
“It’s Titus Soft,” Simon corrected him. “I don’t know why the fuck they didn’t just rename the company after they couldn’t figure out how to make games.”
“Because everyone…” Sara began. “Is a fucking idiot.”
BAZZZZ
As the door buzzer sounded, Mark walked in the door. He wasn’t his normal, stone-faced self after his vacation. He was smiling ear to ear and carrying a bag of treats. “What’s up, bitches? I’m back, and I brought omiyage!”
The air was sucked out of the room. “Mark, your boyfriend decided to fuck us over.”
Mark rolled his eyes and entered the breakroom with the three. Without even saying a word, his demeanor changed. He set the bags on the table and whipped out his cell phone. “Mother fucker, I’m so tired of this jackass.”
“Dump him,” Cody chuckled.
“This isn’t the time, beef tits,” Sara cut him off.
“Josh,” Mark barked into the phone. “Do you know how a vape shop works?”
There was a silence filled only with the buzzing of Josh’s barely audible screams. “Yeah, we aren’t doing this bullshit. I don’t care how much you think you can save….yeah…no…I don’t care, Josh….yeah, enough with using your kids as an excuse, dude.”
Mark pulled the phone away from his ear quickly as the full force of Josh’s voice nearly cracked the phone speakers. After a few moments, the screams died. “Look. I have three employees standing here who need to be paid to live. If we only let people sample one juice, they aren’t going to come back, because they can just go over to Vape Much, My Friend? and try ten per day. They have a bigger selection, better distributors, and frankly, better policy, and you think the way to beat them is to crack down on customer samples? No, I’m taking this down, and we will talk about it later…uh huh…yeah…tell your girlfriend to go fuck herself, then Josh…yeah…we’re shaking in our boots…yeah…see ya.”
Mark hung up the phone and ripped down the paper. He crumpled it up, threw it in the trash, and took a deep breath. “Hi. How are you all?”
“How are we?” Sara gave him a hug. “How are you? Tell us about Japan!”
Mark returned the hug, then started going through the bag, pulling out big packs of candy and cookies in neat boxes. “These are for you all. You can get this kind of stuff at lots of the stations. It’s just kind of the processed version of the area’s local specialties. I really like the Momiji manju, myself.”
“Did you get any Japanese pussy?” Cody chimed in.
“I…did not.” Mark sighed, slumping his shoulders.
“Dude, you can just buy it.” Cody grabbed a handful of the snacks and started eating.
“Yes,” Mark nodded, an expression of unreadable intent plastered on his face. “In Roppongi and several other places. I am aware. However, I wasn’t there for simple relaxation like I said.”
For the twenty-five years that Sara had known Mark, she knew exactly what that face meant. He was onto one of his Peter Griffin-esque shenanigans, again. She sighed. “What is it this time?”
Simon raised an eyebrow in wonder. Sara thought she saw a twinkle on his eyelid, but dismissed it as the new lights made everything look different. Though he was the newest member of their quad, Simon was always into whatever Mark proposed. “Did you…”
“I did,” Mark confirmed, pulling his backpack off and setting it on the table gently.
“Wait,” Sara said, cocking her head. “Did what? Why did Simon…what’s going on?”
Mark unzipped his bag and pulled out what appeared to be a glowing Dungeon Master’s guide, setting it down between the four, who had gathered around the table in awe. “I did it,” Mark confirmed. “We are finally going into Dunge—”
“Stop!” Sara said, cocking her head. “I don’t think we should say the game…just in case this works.”
“Why?” Cody responded, taking a package from the bag.
“I’ve spent the last 3 years in law school,” Sara said. “For just this kind of thing. We can’t say copyrighted stuff or we might get sued.”
“We’re going to be in Mark’s homebrew world,” Simon shrugged. “Who gives a fuck?”
“Well,” Sara sighed, having thought about this at length since Mark started talking about it fifteen years ago. “What if we get sent back home? We won’t be able to use any of our experiences for film or movie…and if this gets made into a book, then we can get sued, too. It’s just best to keep it generic.”
“I don’t even know if this is going to work, guys.” Mark shrugged.
“You brought back a glowing DMG from Japan that is somehow in English.” Cody looked down at it. “I don’t see lights where the light is coming from, and this certainly isn’t glowstick juice, so yeah, it probably will.”
“Where did you find this anyway?” Simon picked it up and leafed through the pages. “And why is every page glowing, as well?”
“I traveled to this remote island where only like eleven people live,” Mark recounted his journey. “There was a big cave that no one had gone into for centuries apparently, because it was thought to be haunted. I just went in and got it.”
“Just like that?” Sara raised an eyebrow. “We have been roommates for…what, fifteen years now, and I haven’t seen you so much as go into the kitchen with the light off, so what the hell is this about you going into a spooky cave to get a glowing book?”
“A dark kitchen could hold Dexter,” Mark said. “A dark cave contained a glowing DMG.”
“Dexter only kills bad people,” Simon folded his massive arms over his massive chest. “You are not bad.”
“Besides the point.” Cody said. “We have it. What do we do?”
Mark scratched his chin and looked at all of them. “I’ve taken the time to update everything in the world to custom, full homebrew. Remember I told you all to roll up your dream characters if you ever got ported into a LitRPG and bring them today? If everything goes right, we put our sheets in this box,” he produced a glowing box made from the same wood as the book cover, “and once I open the book, poof.”
“I got dibs on Rogue.” Cody eagerly pulled a crumpled, heavily erased character sheet from his jacket pocket. “I’m going full dual-wielding assassin. I want stealth, I want backstab multipliers, and I want to be doing massive DPS while you idiots take the hits.”
“The hell you do.” The voice rumbled like thunder. Simon leaned forward, his massive hands planting flat on the glass table. The glass actually groaned under his weight. “I always play the Rogue,” Simon said, his eyes locking onto Cody with an intensity that made the hairs on the back of Sara's neck stand up. “I have the most mechanical knowledge of the stealth systems, I know the trap-disarming algorithms, and I actually have the patience to scout. You don't.”
“I called it, you giant cock-goblin!” Cody protested, his smugness knowing absolutely no bounds. “I’m sick of tanking! Every campaign for the last five years, you guys make me play some meat-shield Paladin or Barbarian because I’m loud. I want to try something new!”
“You simple twat!” Sara rolled her eyes. “You don’t just ‘try something new’ when it comes to the rest of your actual, literal life! This isn't a weekend module where you can reroll if you fall into a pit trap! We need optimized, tried-and-true tactical cohesion.”
“She’s right,” Simon said, his voice dropping an octave, losing any trace of the usual table-banter.
He unzipped his bag and pulled out a crisp, perfectly printed character sheet. He paused, staring down at it for a long second. Then, moving with sudden, frantic energy, he grabbed a pencil, flipped it over, and began furiously erasing a section at the top of the page. He scrubbed the pink rubber against the paper so hard Sara thought it might tear. Finally, he blew the eraser shavings away, quickly scrawled a single word in the blank space, and slid it across the glass to Mark.
“I am playing the Ranger/Rogue hybrid. Specifically, a Forest Elf.”
Mark leaned over, squinting at the fresh, smudged graphite on Simon’s sheet. He frowned. “Simon… this says Female Forest Elf.”
Cody burst out laughing. “Bro. You’re six-foot-six, you look like a lumberjack that eats other lumberjacks, and you want to spend eternity in a fantasy world as a hot elf chick? Are you just trying to get free drinks at the tavern?”
Simon’s jaw clenched. The muscles in his neck pulled taut, like steel cables under immense strain. This wasn't a joke to him. The desperation she had seen in his eyes before was here again, but sharper. More defined.
“It is a mathematical optimization,” Simon said, his voice terrifyingly calm and completely devoid of humor. “Female Forest Elves receive an inherent plus-two modifier to both Dexterity and wisdom in Mark’s homebrew system, whereas the males only receive a modifier to Wisdom. Furthermore, the hitbox ratio for the female character model is twelve percent smaller, allowing for superior evasion in close-quarters combat. If I am going to be the party's primary scout and trap-disabler, I require the highest possible agility threshold. The gender of the avatar is irrelevant; the stats are what will keep us alive.”
Cody blinked, thoroughly out-nerded. “I mean… I guess that makes sense. But still, dude, it’s going to be weird hearing your deep-ass voice coming out of—”
“Drop it, Cody,” Sara cut in, her tone slicing through the room like a scalpel. She didn't know exactly what was going on in Simon’s head, but she knew an airtight legal defense when she heard one. Simon had built an impenetrable wall of game mechanics to justify a choice he clearly needed to make on a soul-deep level. She respected the hell out of the tactic. “The math checks out. The defense sustains. Simon is our Elven Rogue.”
Cody threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine! Goddammit. I’ll run a Cleric then. But I am going full War Domain. I’m not just going to be your heal-bitch. I’m taking heavy armor and a mace.”
“Acceptable,” Mark nodded, pulling out a pen and making a note. “A heavily armored Cleric gives us a frontline tank who can also cast Cure Wounds. Optimization is good, but do not min-max. Portal systems in these books tend to punish extreme stat-dumping. Sara, you’re adept at finding loopholes. What are you bringing to the table?”
“I’m running a Dual-Class Druid/Witch hybrid,” Sara said confidently, pulling out her sheet. “I’ll have animal shape-shifting for mobility, high-tier healing for backup, and potion brewing for passive income and buffs. But more importantly, I’m taking the Archivist background. It gives me a passive bonus to reading magical contracts, interpreting ancient laws, and manipulating spell-scrolls. If we are walking into a world governed by a rigid ruleset, I am going to make sure we know exactly how to exploit the Terms of Service.”
Mark stroked his well-trimmed goatee, looking genuinely impressed. “That is… incredibly on-brand for you. Good. That covers stealth, healing, tanking, and utility. Which frees me up to be pure, unadulterated, catastrophic DPS.”
Mark gathered the sheets. He slid them into the slot on the top of the glowing wooden box. They vanished with a faint shimmer. “Once they are in, they are locked. None of us have partners, and you all work for me, so... we will jump after the last coil is sold.”
They concluded their meeting and went to work. Sara turned on the store lights and flipped the sign to Open. The first two hours were always the slowest. They each handled several customers and chatted with Ron, who was their perpetual “corner stool” guy, always coming in, sampling slow, and talking to everyone who sat within five stools for hours.
BAZZZZ
Sara looked up to greet the next customer, but instead took a deep, slow breath, closed her eyes, then exhaled. “What do you want, Craig?”
The owner of Vape Much, My Friend? walked in the door, smug and standing tall. His beard went all the way to his chest, which was conveniently much higher than the normal chest, because it was pushed up there by his abnormally large gut. He scanned the several customers at the sample bar, then looked back to Sara. “I just came to see how the competition…not that you are any…is doing.”
“Get out, Craig.” She shook her head. “We didn’t order a five-hundred-pound box of shit, today.”
A smile befitting of the greatest of all incels washed over his face. “SUCKIN’ VAPES USES SYNTHETIC NIC! COME TO VAPE MUCH, MY FRIEND? FOR A TEN PERCENT DISCOUNT!”
Five faces at the testing bar swiveled to look at the fat man loudly protesting, then simply turned around, laughing and smiling at Sara.
“Make it twelve percent!” Craig gurgled through so much neck fat. “And, I’ll throw in nudes of Sara!”
Sara’s eyes went wide. She knew those nudes she sent to her ex had gotten around. “Craig, you mother fucker!”
“Get out before I call the cops, Craig.” Mark walked from the back. “You’re pathetic, dude. You have a business that’s kicking our asses, and you come in here to do this? To threaten my employees and steal my customers?”
“I’m pathetic?” Craig laughed. “At least I get females in my store.”
“Females?” Simon stretched up to his full 6’5” and walked out from behind the counter. “You are sick, dude. You name all your juice the most disgusting stuff like Taste of Pussy, which clearly you have no concept of, because it tastes like you used fucking tuna to flavor the carts. Stop saying females and start saying women, bitch.”
“If you touch me, I’ll call the police!” Craig stuck his chest out.
Simon kept walking.
“Stop, Simon.” Mark called out to no avail.
Simon stopped only once he got within two feet of Craig. “Get. Out.”
Craig looked terrified, but then paused and cocked his head. “Is that…lipstick?”
Simon’s face went flush and he slapped a hand over his lips.
“Yeah, and eyeshadow!” Craig took a step back, pointing and laughing. “Look guys! The big boy is wearing makeup! What a fag!”
The air in the store was filled with so much more than dense vape smoke. Before Mark could reach him, Simon wound up and swung. His fist connected square with Craig’s jaw. Spit and blood spattered the group on the stools as he fell, his head cracking hard against the concrete floor. Everything was silent.
“Fuck,” Simon said. “He’s not moving.”
Mark knelt down next to him and held fingers to his neck. “He’s breathing.”
“Mark, I’m…” Simon took two steps back, his hand over his mouth, before bolting to the back room. “We have to call the police.”
Mark shook his head as he walked past Sara to the back. “Close up and get back here. Send everyone home.”
Sara snapped into action. “I need everyone to leave. We have to close.”
“Shouldn’t they stay as witnesses?” Cody asked.
That was enough to scare many of them as they got up and quietly left.
“Just…” Sara was panicked, turning off the lights and waiting for the last vaper to leave before locking the door. “Just…get back here.”
Sara, her stomach queasy, went back to the breakroom where Simon was crying on the couch and Mark was staring intensely at the security monitor feeds. “They’re all out. Craig still hasn’t moved.”
“I’ll go to prison,” Simon bawled. “I can't go to prison.”
“You're not going to prison,” Mark said, his voice flat. He pointed at the screen. “The chance that there’s just a random cruiser going by right at this exact—"
Sara gasped. “One hundred percent.” Red and blue strobes were violently painting the front windows of the shop. Two cruisers had just pulled onto the curb. The fleeing customers had obviously flagged them down.
“We have to go now.” Mark grabbed the glowing wooden box. “The sheets are locked in. I open the book, and we're gone.”
On the monitor, an officer shone a flashlight through the glass, the beam hitting Craig's unmoving, bleeding body on the linoleum. The officer immediately drew his baton and aimed it at the door.
"Exigent circumstances," Sara yelled, her law school instincts overriding her fear. "They see a body! They don't need a warrant or a key, they are coming in now!"
Simon pulled his hands from his face and stood up. The desperate exhaustion was back in his eyes. “Just… let's go. Please. I want to leave this world, now!”
Sara’s heart broke for him. She had never seen him raise his voice before today, and she knew there was something much deeper going on. She wanted to protect him.
CRASH. The sound of the front door shattering echoed down the hallway. Heavy boots crunched over broken safety glass.
"Police! Is anyone in here?!" a voice boomed.
"Do it, Mark!" Sara screamed.
Mark threw the glowing box onto the center of the book and flipped the cover open.
An officer rounded the corner into the breakroom, his weapon drawn. He saw Mark holding the blinding, glowing artifacts.
"Drop it!" the cop yelled.
Mark didn't stop.
The cop fired.
POP-FIZZLE-CRACK.
It wasn't a bullet. Two Taser prongs slammed into the spine of the glowing book just as the portal activated. Fifty thousand volts of electricity surged directly into the magical matrix.
Sara screamed as a violently blue portal ripped open in the break room, accompanied by a sound like tearing metal. But as the electricity hit the book, the light sputtered, turning a sickly, corrupted static green. The air pressure vanished, pulling the breath from Sara's lungs, and the glitching, unstable light swallowed the table, the book, and the four of them away.